work consistently towards reaching my goal weight

I’m getting frustrated with myself and my progress with this goal. I have always been able to keep up momentum for short periods of time, but then I experience what I can only call a mental block, which stops me dead and which I’ve never been able to really get past.

I’ve never been a fan of journaling, but I have so many thoughts about this particular issue that I just can’t work through without some kind of tool, so I’ve decided to try writing them down in an online journal. I’ve only written two entries but already I can see patterns emerging and, while I don’t have any easy solutions, I’m at least able to think a bit more clearly about this goal and how I’m going to be able to achieve it.

I’ve joined the college gym and, while I still need to get into a regular routine, it feels great to be properly exercising again. I thought I’d have to force myself to go, but it’s great to feel in control of this goal again after a less than successful summer. I haven’t weighed myself in a while because I want to concentrate on developing a routine rather than on the figures right now. I’ll give myself at least a week before I start tracking my weight again.

Since returning from Paris I’ve hit a plateau with my weight loss, mainly because I haven’t been in one place long enough to keep to a real routine. I did manage to not gain anything while travelling in Canada – a real achievment, considering the amount of cupcakes I ate and all the Tim Hortons I visited! A few pounds have crept back on since I got home, but I’ve managed to get back on track.

I’ve started drinking 3 litres of water a day (which, to be honest, I only manage because of the orange squash I add to it – but it’s only about 40 extra calories). I’ve cut down on my carbohydrates again and have started eating smaller portions more often – I’m not sure if this will make a difference but I’m giving it a go. I’ve also started tracking my calories again – time-consuming, but I find it helps to keep me motivated and on the straight and narrow.

I haven’t been getting much exercise, but I start back at university next week and one of the first things I’m doing is joining the gym there.

The plan now is to keep working on developing good eating habits and, once I go back to college, make time for regular exercise. My goal is to drop another dress size by Christmas, which means losing about 20 pounds in 4 months. Completely doable.

A very bad few days. Exams are next week and I’m getting more and more stressed and therefore much less motivated to watch what I eat. I haven’t gone to the gym much in the past week either. In fairness, most of the food I’m eating now is still healthy, but I’m just eating too much of it, even when I know I’m not hungry. I’ll be lucky if I’ve just maintained my weight this week, but I’m not weighing myself until I’m back on track, as I know it wouldn’t do me any good to see what I suspect confirmed on the scales.

...and am now at my lowest weight in 10 years! When I went to Dublin a few days ago I was thrilled to find I now also fit into the next clothing size down (was beginning to think I’d never get there) and have only two more sizes to drop before I’m at my goal size!

Something that’s bothering me is that I genuinely can’t see these changes when I look in the mirror. If the scales weren’t telling me what I’ve lost, I doubt I’d even know. When I saw my family in Dublin the first thing everyone said was that I’d lost so much weight, when I hadn’t even been expecting them to notice because I don’t notice it myself.

I think the problem is that my attitude hasn’t evolved with my weight loss. I never bother with short-term rewards, although I think a lot about what I’ll do once I’m at my target weight. It’s like there’s nothing for me in between being overweight and being “perfect”. This is something I clearly need to start working on.

I ate a healthy breakfast, but for lunch I had pizza (but just a portion, not a whole one or anything) then for dinner a falafal sandwich. I also had, ahem, two sorbet cones. And I hardly drank any water today. _{Hangs head in shame.}

But I did walk a lot around the city today, so that should go some way towards repairing the damage. I find this goal sometimes conflicts with my goal of making the most of my time here – there are so many new foods/restaurants that I want to try but I hold back a lot of the time because I don’t want to overdo the calories. While losing weight is my most important goal, I still want to enjoy the food here. And really, I eat healthily and exercise a lot during the week, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t take myself out to lunch or dinner at the weekend. This goal shouldn’t be achieved by completely sacrificing other pleasures.

I lost 7 pounds this month! I was so surprised when I weighed myself this morning, since two weeks ago the scales showed hardly any difference at all. Even though I am surprised, I know I deserve it – I have been working so hard on this goal for the past month. I go to the gym five days a week now and I’ve gradually given up all the foods that were bad for me, so I do eat very heathily now. SparkPeople has been a huge help to me in staying on track. Like I wrote in my last entry, I had some slip-ups this month too, but I managed to keep myself on track by telling myself to draw a line under them and just start afresh tomorrow. I’m very proud of myself right now.

For the past few days, I haven’t been feeling very well. I’m not so sick that I can’t get out of bed, but when I tried to go to the gym I could barely manage 20 minutes before I had to give up. A pattern that I’ve seen emerge in the past three weeks since I started using the gym regularly is that there is a very strong link between my diet and my exercise. On the days I go to the gym, I mostly don’t feel like eating unhealthy food (or even if I do, the cravings aren’t that strong). That’s probably because: (1) I’m more aware of how much work it’ll take to burn off those extra calories if I eat them and (2) It takes away from the time I spend in my apartment, so I’m not as bored when I am there (because I have more stuff to catch up on). I also have no problem drinking 2 litres of water on the days I go to the gym. But lately I haven’t eaten very well and I’ve had some really strong cravings.

Aside from the horrible fluey feeling that I have now, I’ve felt really unhealthy for the past few days and I realised this is how I must have felt a lot of the time before I started making changes. There is no way I want to go back to feeling like that all the time.

Weight loss: 0

Gaah! I was so tempted not to post any update for February, but I’m no coward. I’m maintaining my good eating habits – I don’t eat complex carbohydrates or sugar anymore – so that can’t be the reason for the stall. The big problem is that I’m not exercising. I’m also finding it much more difficult to adapt my diet to the food here in France. I started over with my diet in January at home and now I have to do exactly the same thing here again. It’ll just take me some time to get it right. I suppose, looking on the bright side, I didn’t backslide and have kept off the weight I lost in January.

I’m not going to post a weight loss goal here for March. I’ll still have one, but am going to keep it private, just to see how that works.

I’ve been slipping with my new eating resolutions, which is mostly to do with the fact that I’ve been quite fed up here at home recently. Right now I’m only just maintaining my weight loss from last month. I need to find some way of pulling myself back up, and I’m hoping that going back to Paris in two days will help me do that.